Barbara S McCann — Psychiatrist in Seattle, WA

Not a good listener, patient and helpful. Very critical even on first session.

Highly recommend Dr. McCann. I have seen her for my anxiety and OCD. She has greatly improved my ability to deal with my condition. I typically don’t post reviews, especially about my mental health. But I feel it is so important to share my experience because of the long road I’ve been on to find treatment and a provider that works. My previous experiences have been with small private practices. In those sessions it was all talk therapy (tell me how you’ve been?). For some people that works great. But if you have a more persnickety condition, I encourage you to work with Dr. McCann. If you’re unable to get an appointment I would recommend the UW in general. My treatment consisted of Exposure Response Therapy (ERP) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). These are not as pleasant as “talk therapy”, but my gosh they help! It’s not a linear path, you’ll have ups and downs. If it doesn’t work the first time, or first week, keep it up. It took me a while for certain things to ‘click’. When they finally did I was glad I stuck with them. I hope that this review helps you in your search for a psychologist.

Dr McCann has a friendly, polite nature but soon demonstrated a lack of curiosity, rigid, inflexible thinking & an inability/unwillingness to accept & process new information that may challenge her preconceptions. When asked to justify her conclusions I received no reply beyond her claims simply being restated. Her reccomended treatment has never worked for me, yet when I asked why she wanted me to do try it yet again she claimed that it would work this time simply because she was doing it, a mentality that is dangerously close to Magical Thinking. Being highly concerned that her approach was veering way off course I asked about what she would do if, yet again, her sugested treatment failed. I received no response. She avoided every opportunity to explain the justification for her reasoning no matter how often I asked. But it gets worse. When I read the after visit notes she'd included a claim that was an outright fabrication concerning an area of my symptoms that had never even been discussed during our meeting. Let that sink in, she pulled this out of thin air without asking me about it, which she could have easily done, got it utterly wrong & yet used this upon which to base her treatment decision. Dr McCann is unable, or unwilling to think outside of her narrow skill set & while this is not a problem itself she has shown that she seems to be like someone who has a hammer & thinks everything is a nail. Her lack of curiosity, blindness to information that is at odds with her rapidly formed opinion (less than 15 mins, including introductions, pleasentries & formalities) &, most stunning of all, making stuff up that was never touched upon during the appointment is seriously disturbing.